Oh. My. Word.
This makes me feel like an unmotivated idiot.
(It's a letter to Neil Gaiman. The unbolded bit at the bottom is his response.)
I wrote to you in 2005 about my son, Jared. I'm sure you don't remember, but you posted my comment on your April, 29, 2005 journal entry.
I had been told that Jared, then 5, had visual and auditory processing disorders and that he'd never learn to read. We went to a book reading of yours, and then, a couple of years later, Jared found his signed copy of Coraline and decided he would teach himself to read it. He did it!
Jared is 12 now, still homeschooled, and I'm happy to say is reading and comprehending on a college level. We found out that he 'only' has a visual processing disorder (VPD), a fine motor delay and he's highly gifted. Because of the VPD, he has no visual memory... he cannot make 'pictures' in his mind. He describes it as 'just being black in there'.
We were talking about his VPD, and I asked him how he taught himself to read. He replied that he remembered your book reading, so he decided to figure out how to 'translate' the weird squiggles on the page into auditory sounds so he could remember them. (This explains the difficulty he had transitioning from reading aloud to silently!)
I'm almost certain that if he had had someone try to teach him to read, he couldn't have done it. It seems that you gave him an idea that allowed him to figure out how to overcome his disability.
Over the years, this has given him the confidence to overcome a number of hurdles. He simply thinks back to teaching himself to read, after several adults had told him he never would, and he is reminded of how remembering you reading aloud gave him the idea to 'translate' written words into sounds... and he thinks outside the box to figure out a way around whatever he's having trouble with.
As I said, he's 12 now, and reading "Grey's Anatomy", the medical school textbook, for fun! He has decided to be a trauma surgeon.
I honestly don't think his life would have turned out this way if we hadn't taken him to your book reading.
So, thank you again for writing, for reading, and for changing my child's life.
Heather (Hubbard) Conrad
Thank you, Heather. Tell Jared I'm a fan.
I had been told that Jared, then 5, had visual and auditory processing disorders and that he'd never learn to read. We went to a book reading of yours, and then, a couple of years later, Jared found his signed copy of Coraline and decided he would teach himself to read it. He did it!
Jared is 12 now, still homeschooled, and I'm happy to say is reading and comprehending on a college level. We found out that he 'only' has a visual processing disorder (VPD), a fine motor delay and he's highly gifted. Because of the VPD, he has no visual memory... he cannot make 'pictures' in his mind. He describes it as 'just being black in there'.
We were talking about his VPD, and I asked him how he taught himself to read. He replied that he remembered your book reading, so he decided to figure out how to 'translate' the weird squiggles on the page into auditory sounds so he could remember them. (This explains the difficulty he had transitioning from reading aloud to silently!)
I'm almost certain that if he had had someone try to teach him to read, he couldn't have done it. It seems that you gave him an idea that allowed him to figure out how to overcome his disability.
Over the years, this has given him the confidence to overcome a number of hurdles. He simply thinks back to teaching himself to read, after several adults had told him he never would, and he is reminded of how remembering you reading aloud gave him the idea to 'translate' written words into sounds... and he thinks outside the box to figure out a way around whatever he's having trouble with.
As I said, he's 12 now, and reading "Grey's Anatomy", the medical school textbook, for fun! He has decided to be a trauma surgeon.
I honestly don't think his life would have turned out this way if we hadn't taken him to your book reading.
So, thank you again for writing, for reading, and for changing my child's life.
Heather (Hubbard) Conrad
Thank you, Heather. Tell Jared I'm a fan.
Lifted completely from here.
m.
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